Architecture and the Language Debate

THE latest book from a University of Huddersfield professor ranges over a four-century span of history to make an original contribution to continuing controversy over the connections between architecture and language.

Nicholas Temple’s newly-published Architecture and the Language Debate focusses on developments in Italy from the early 1400s to the start of the 18^th century.

“The book is an exploration of debates around language – particularly the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in Early Modern Italy – and how architecture was developed as a framework for deliberations in language,” explained the author, who is Professor of Architecture and Co-Director of the Centre of Urban Design, Architecture and Sustainability at the University.

“There is a theory developed since the 1970s about architecture as a form of writing.  It is actually a receptacle for human exchange,” said Professor Temple, adding that in his new book he identifies a direct parallel between studies in language and architectural developments during the Early Modern period.

Visits to Florence and Rome – including the Vatican Library – enabled Professor Temple to research a wide range of early texts, including some of the first theoretical writings about architecture.

The new book covers four periods, from the early 15^th century to the start of the 1700s.  There is an examination of the later 16^th century in Rome, when there were massive excavations, largely to provide material for the new basilica of St Peter’s.

“There were lots of discoveries of ancient ruins and these were then applied to new buildings – literally or iconographically.  So, the language of architecture draws on ancient material.”

“The book will make architects aware that there is more to their subject than an intellectual exercise, separate from human interaction.”

Professor Nicholas Temple

During the Baroque period in the 1600s, a universal architectural language was developed in parallel to linguistic initiatives to create a universal language that spread around the world by Jesuit missionaries.  The upshot was Italianate buildings – the first international style of architecture – to be found in Mexico, South America, China and Madagascar.

The early 18^th century saw a reaction against the Baroque and its affectations.  “We get a stripping down into a more primitive form of language called Arcadia, which almost becomes anti-urban.”

Professor Temple hopes that his book will make architects aware that there is more to their subject than an intellectual exercise, separate from human interaction.

Architecture and the Language Debate is the latest in a sequence of books written and edited by Professor Temple that examine the history of architecture and urbanism.

For example, in 2014, he was shortlisted by the International Committee of Architecture Critics for the Bruno Zevi Book Award for Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II and in 2019 he co-edited The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture.